For Aid-in-Dying Laws (1 Letter)

Dr. Jack Kevorkian may have gone about helping people die the wrong way. Yet aid in dying (much more accurate terminology than assisted suicide) is happening every day.

Rather than continuing this illegal, underground and unregulated practice, laws, like the one you mention in Oregon, with strict safeguards, should be enacted. Oregon’s aid-in-dying law, where prescribed lethal medicines for dying patients must be self-administered, has been remarkably successful.

Only a small number of terminally ill people have used the medicines (292 patients in nine years), but thousands of people have been comforted knowing they have a choice at life’s end, an escape as a last resort.

Almost 90 percent were enrolled in hospices (three times the national average) and almost all had health insurance. There have been no abuses. It is time for other states to follow Oregon’s lead.

David C. Leven

Executive Director, Compassion

and Choices of New York

New York, June 5, 2007

A version of this letter appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: For Aid-in-Dying Laws. Today's Paper|Subscribe